Mana Pool Snippets - Keystone

Part 6

The parents nodded. 

“The anti-terran threats. The reasons why magic is dangerous. The reasons why you can’t have Andrea in the house.”

“Yes, all of it,” Morgan said. “We were for terran rights from the beginning because, well, it’s a new world. The things were saying were not us. You might say… we were puppets.”

Scott felt chills realizing the full extent of the Reaper’s power. If they had that power to use humans as puppets, could it be the same for the media?

“What about the totems? They see everything what you guys did,” Katie mentioned.

“Yes and no, Ms. Walsh,” the eagle said. “We saw bits and pieces of the enthrallment, but everything else was blackness, and worse. We were beaten and tortured by telepathic violence day in and day out.”

“Wow,” Katie said.

“When these two arrived in their Inner Sanctums, we were so tortured we barely moved off the ground. My body looked fine, but I felt like I was mauled by an alligator. Feeling our hosts hold us made us recover quickly. Horrible I tell you.” The eagle sniffed.

“Never again I want those feeling come back,” the bobcat added.

“Well good thing,” Katie said. “It’s known that terrans can’t be zombies anymore.”

“And now that we are terrans we won’t be hurting any people,” Morgan said, “and we can finally move on.”

“Well, there is the magic, and I don’t suppose you two tried out.”

“Not quite but eventually,” Beth said.

Katie smiled.

“This does impact our economy, right? Me and Morgan have to understand this one way or another, plust get back on good terms with your parent’s, Katie. I’m sure that they are hurting financially?”

“You’ll see,” Katie answered. “But here’s what I still don’t get.” Katie looked at Andrea. “What did you do to save them?”

Without any more questions and hoping to get any closer, Andrea told them everything without any hesitation, yet her doubt of using it were the blame. It made Katie so excited yet stupid to not notice it sooner, and thus Scott knowing what to look for in his spellbook. Speaking of spellbook…

“I want to talk to the alien,” Andrea said. “ I want to thank him.”

*****

The Alien Campsite, near Lake Skinner

Fifteen minutes later…

Half a mile from Doffo Winery, and one thousand feet east of the Lake Skinner entrance was the site. A five-hundred feet wide circle indent in the ground marked Jaruka’s territory, but it served for the invisible repulsion shield he was grateful to acquire from Nova Company engineering, for safety. The middle was the loner Nova Company dropship, a Marin’zal gunnery dropship, with it’s weapons removed by orders from Councilman Denverbay and Captain Brill Secambre.

But it’s not Jaruka’s “true home.” He hated the thing. Within two months, it became un-flyable from smashed portholes, scorched holes through the hull, and chopped up not by intense battles, but by Jaruka’s random spurts of rage for hating his predicament. And every week he asks Nova Company, “Where’s my new ship?” and they said, “We’re working on it.” Yet the stress and frustration of waiting, on top of information gathering for Xi’Tra on the Wave and the terran transformations, keeps piling on.

He tries balancing it with his rage, and glassblowing.

Jaruka was near the active furnace attempting to make two more glass liquor steins when he heard two knocks at the hatch. It was peaceful; he was focused. The sound made him jump and the red hot glass warped.